


The Curious Case of the Roadtrip to Jersey

by SoundandColor



Category: Elementary (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Deductions Run Amok, Gen, Road Trip!!!, What's That Smell?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-12
Updated: 2012-09-12
Packaged: 2017-11-14 02:47:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/510508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SoundandColor/pseuds/SoundandColor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>”That never happened.”<br/>“I saw you!” <br/>“Eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable.”</p><p>Or the mystery of which of our four heroes farted in the car. Not to worry, Sherlock Holmes is on the case.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Curious Case of the Roadtrip to Jersey

**Author's Note:**

> _Yeah_... I don't even know. Just lay back and think of England.

 

Gregson is a pack rat.

 

His car is filled to the brim with miscellaneous papers, accordion files bursting under the weight of old cases and paper cups from fast food places. He shoves them off of the back seat and ushers Watson and Holmes in with an apologetic grin. “Sorry this is so last minute but we just got the tip--”

 

“It’s fine,” Holmes cuts in, pulling his jacket in closer.. “The woman needs to be interviewed as soon as possible and we want to be there.”

 

Watson’s sort of surprised by how much she agrees. By how deeply she’s been pulled into his world in such a short amount of time. Gregson shuts the door and she watches him walk around to the drivers seat before speaking. “Why aren’t I in my own car again?” she asks, touching Holmes’ shoulder with her own. “Alone, soft music playing...”

 

“I have no idea.” He lies and she makes an indiscernible sound as they pull away from the curb.

 

\--

 

Watson has been staring out of the window for the past hour and she isn’t aware of the passing landscape lulling her asleep until Abreu’s voice startles her upright. “You’re telling me you don’t smell that?”

 

“It’s not that bad,” Gregson tries to soothe.

 

“Not that bad?” Holmes asks, face scrunched up, side eyeing the other man in disbelief.

 

She rolls her shoulders, begins to ask, “What are you--?” When the smell hits her. Watson is a grown woman and a former surgeon so she has seen and smelled just about everything the human body has to offer but this... She brings her fist up to her nose and shakes her head. “Ugh!” Watson groans, sounding genuinely harassed, “The heat is on!”

 

“How about I open the window, children?” Gregson asks, reaching for the crank and rolling it down just a little. “Is everyone satisfied?”

 

“No,” Abreu answers flatly, pout firmly in place.“It’s cold out there and it’s 7AM on a Saturday morning and I'm driving to Jersey with you three. I thought it was already as bad as it could get.”

 

Watson nods her head in agreement. Says, “Its not only gross, it’s just disrespectful. One or more of you ‘ought to be ashamed of yourselves.”

 

“One of us?

 

Watson tosses her hair over her shoulder. It loses some of it’s gravitas in such a small space but she gets her point across. “That’s what I just said.”

 

“Well you don’t know that. You don’t know who it was,” Abreu starts. “It could’ve been any of you.”

 

“No it couldn’t have because it wasn’t me.”

 

I think I can help with this.” The sight of Holmes holding up his pointer finger and beginning to speak is par for the course. The strange part is that they actually stop what they’re doing to listen. “We have a little while before we get to the house, I can figure it out before then.”

 

Watson raises her chin and crosses her arms over her chest. “You’re want to deduce who passed gas in the car?”

 

“Yes, I do.” He answers simply after a second of thinking on her question. “The person did this in a closed and very warm car knowing it would make all of us uncomfortable. They could have some sort of latent anger toward one or all of us and I think it couldn’t hurt to find that out sooner rather than later.”

 

“Maybe,” Watson concedes. “That or they just really needed to fart.”

 

Gregson snorts back laughter and Holmes turns toward her, a familiar look on his face. “How about we start with you.”

 

“How about not.”

 

“But it would make sense, don’t you think? You were falling asleep and when the body relaxes to that degree it would be easy for you to just--

 

“Let one loose,” Abreu finishes and it’s obviously bull but he’s nodding his head as if Holmes has just spoken the gospel truth. “That sounds legit.”

 

“Oh, it does?”

 

“Sure. Why not?”

 

“Well what about you?”

 

“What about me?”

 

She turns back to her roommate. “Here’s one, Holmes. Ever heard of _he who smelt it, dealt it_?”

 

He looks thoughtful, begins to say, “Yes I--” but Abreu cuts him off. “Whatever! Maybe he who smelt it just has a sensitive nose!”

 

“If you say so.”

 

“No, you’re right,” Holmes states with finality, cutting their disagreement short and turning his intense gaze onto the man in the passenger seat. “Guilty people will often try to divert attention from themselves by playing the victim.”

 

“You don’t have to tell me that,” Abreu replies curtly, all companionable feelings from a moment before now gone. “I’ve been a cop for a long time. A real one. I got a badge and everything.”

 

“When I came to your front door earlier,” Holmes goes on, almost like he hasn’t heard the other man speak at all and Watson wouldn’t be surprised if he hadn’t. She’s seen him in the thrall of a puzzle before. Turning it’s small parts over in his mind, thinking, _always thinking_. Even when it comes to a case as ridiculous as this one he always gives it his all.

 

Holmes turns his head to the side and closes his eyes. Falling back into the memory. “I detected the distinct scent of some sort of heavy spice mixture. It wasn’t loud enough for you to have used it that morning, with breakfast or whatever, so you probably had it for dinner last night. That could be a cause for what just transpired this morning.”

 

“Hmmm,” Watson mimics the detective's words from earlier. “Sounds legit.”

 

Abreu rolls his eyes as Gregson reaches over from the drivers seat and pats his shoulder. “Now that we’re through with that--”

 

“We’re not through though. We still haven’t figured out who did it yet and you’re also a viable candidate.”

 

“Excuse me?”

 

“You’re older,” Holmes goes on, sizing his acquaintance up. “You’re also carrying a little extra weight--”

 

“Oh no he didn’t,” Abreu laughs as Holmes watches him quizzically.

 

“What’s so funny? It’s just a fact that as the body ages--”

 

“Okay, that’s enough.” Gregson says quickly, as he rolls the window back up. “I can’t even smell it anymore. Can we end this now?”

 

“We could,” Watson says thoughtfully, and they probably should. Things had been getting a tad heated and it would be for the best to let this go. She looks over at Holmes daintily jiggling his right foot over his left thigh and knows that she can’t. Not yet anyway. “But you forgot someone...”

 

“Who?”

 

“Yourself, asshole,” Abreu replies. “How come you’re not on the list of possible perpetrators?”

 

“Oh, well that’s simple,” he says with such authority she almost doesn’t catch the nonsense that follows. “British people don’t pass gas.”

 

“That is the dumbest thing--”

 

“It’s true. It’s just not in our natures.”

 

Watson lets out a burst of laughter. “Really? Because I distinctly recall an event before taking you out to run yesterday--”

 

“Come now, Watson--”

 

“Remember? You were stretching and--" She shrugs, "nature took it's course." Gregson raises his right eyebrow as he glances at them in the rearview mirror.

 

“That never happened.”

 

“I saw you!”

 

“Eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable. “

 

“Sure,” she replies sarcastically before thinking of something else she has to hash out with him. “Oh and that thing about the alarm clocks?”

 

“From when we first met?” he studies her for a moment. “Still thinking on it, huh?”

 

“Just about how stupid it was. I’m a deep sleeper. I always have been.”

 

“Then why haven’t you been using an alarm at all the past two weeks?” He mutters beneath his breath.

 

“What did you say?” She asks sharply, eyes narrowed to thin slits.

 

“Nothing.”

 

“Well who did it then,” Gregson questions, steering them back onto the topic at hand. She realizes they’ve finally made it to the witness’ house but no one is moving to confront the woman. Instead, they’re all looking at Holmes, waiting to hear what he’ll say.

 

“Oh, that? I thought it was obvious.” She sees Abreu roll his eyes so hard at that, they almost fall out of his head. “Using simple deduction and adding in what I know of our personalities, the answer came rather easily.”

 

“And?”

 

He opens the door and looks back over his shoulder at the three of them. “It’s one of you lot because it wasn’t me.”

 

“Oh come on!”

 

“Shut it, Holmes!”

 

“It was not me!”

 

He only slams the door on their protests and Watson watches as he walks up onto the porch. The interior is quiet in his wake. “That man bothers me,” Abreu finally states, but she can hear slight warmth beneath the gibe and Watson smiles.

 

“Me too.”

 

Holmes turns toward them, points at his naked wrist and theatrically lulls his head to the side, eyes wide and mouth agape. She lets out a slight laugh before schooling her face into indifference and moving to step out of the car. 

 

Time to get to work.  



End file.
